The Darwin Elevator (20 page)

She’d kept quiet, content to listen, waiting for the right moment to turn their discussion to the task at hand. There would be plenty of time.

But then they’d all fallen asleep. For the last six hours, she’d had nothing to do but stare at their captain.

He almost looked dead, the way his arms floated free, his head lolled side to side. Like he’d drowned.

The situation was worse before, when gravity tugged at him with its full fury. At one point she’d pressed, with all possible strength, into the left side of her chair to avoid a stream of drool that spanned the entire gap between his mouth and her headrest.

She couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment when Earth’s eternal tug had begun to fade, but she’d watched with fascination as his motions became lighter. The speed at which his face changed from looking tortured, to serene as a baby, was remarkable.

He had a scar on his forehead. An old one, faded now. His brown hair showed early signs of gray, just behind his temples. Thin lips, cracked from exposure. Bags under his eyes implied a poor sleep schedule. Tania realized she had absolutely no idea what life was like for him.

“Or anyone in Darwin,” she whispered to herself.

Scraps of faded paper and old photographs filled the wall behind him, taped there in haphazard fashion. Souvenirs from past missions, she assumed. A restaurant menu, a string of bottle caps. Someone’s Australian passport. A wedding invitation. Tania found herself smiling at the display. These were the true relics of old Earth, the things no one else thought to collect, or ask for.

One photograph caught her eye. The subject looked familiar, and she squinted to be sure.
It can’t be,
she thought.

Working as quietly as she could, Tania released her harness. The others remained asleep as she pushed out of her chair and floated to the wall, to the photograph.

In the picture, four men stood in front of a telescope.

“Papa,” she whispered.

Her father stood there, smiling from beneath that horrible mustache he wore, something Tania at eight years old had teased him about. He looked sad, she thought. A ghost trapped in a time long gone.

The odds that this crew would have a picture of her father were astronomical. Of all the people—

And then she saw it. Neil Platz, standing next to him, his arm thrown around her father’s shoulder. Shorter hair, blond, not gray. A younger Neil.

Tania’s heart pounded. She held her breath and removed the picture from the wall. With delicate care she turned it over.

A printed note graced the back.
Toyama, Japan, 2264
. The telescope’s grand opening, thanks to a grant from Platz Space Industries. Two years before the Elevator arrived.

“Neil founded the place …,” she whispered. He’d said nothing of it when Tania told him where the data she needed was stored. Yet here he was, cutting the ribbon, funding the facility.
With my father
.

She clutched the picture to her chest. Confusion swarmed in her mind. Perhaps Neil had forgotten about it. His company funded many projects, in a time long forgotten by most.

No,
a voice inside her said. It felt too convenient. She thought back to how she’d identified the telescope as a source for the information. Neil had listened to her theory with rapt attention, a theory she’d come to after several offhand comments he had made over the years. They’d stayed up late into the night, brainstorming, searching the archives. Had he guided all of it? Could he have led her to her conclusions?

She shut her eyes. It seemed impossible that he would do that. It made no sense, and besides, he wanted the data as much as she did. More, perhaps. She saw no point in speculating about it now. After the mission, she would ask him.

The intercom next to Skyler’s head crackled to life. “Captain, you awake?”

Skyler did not stir at the voice, nor did the others.

Tania forced herself back to the moment. She floated back to her seat and buckled in.

“Captain,” the pilot said through the intercom, louder.

The captain woke violently. He thrashed once against his restraint, and shouted, “Falling!” before recognizing his surroundings.

Tania realized she still had the photograph in her hands. She slipped it into a pocket.

Skyler’s eyes settled on her, his expression shifting to embarrassed. “Did I snore?”

“No,” she said, and attempted a smile.

“Good.”

“There was some drool.”

Skyler cringed and forced his eyes closed. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

He opened one eye. “You must get that a lot.”

“Apologies?”

“Drool.”

She laughed, despite herself. Then she looked at the others, who were still sleeping. “I have to say, everyone stared when they first saw me.”

“They’re not used to someone like you,” Skyler said.

“An ‘Orbital’?”

He shook his head. “More to the point, a beauty.”

She blushed.

“Captain?” Angus said, through the speaker.

Skyler tapped the button. “We getting close?”

“Thirty minutes,” Angus said.

“Understood.” Skyler clicked the microphone off and lowered his voice. “It’s a compliment, if you like, but I’m just speaking the truth. Someone with your … qualities, is simply not seen in Darwin.”

“Why not?”

He broke away from her gaze and began to remove his harness. “It’s not a kind place. Enough about that. You’re a scientist, so tell me, have you people figured out what’s going on with the Aura?”

“We’ve got a team working on it,” she said. “I’m afraid I don’t know much else.”

“I hope they work fast. Nightcliff thought we caused it. Did you know that?”

“Why?” she asked.

Skyler shrugged. “The first power blip happened at the same moment we were hitting the Aura, coming back in. Bad timing.”

Tania studied his face. If what he said was true, she doubted it could have been a coincidence. Perhaps they were just the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the Aura really had reached the end of its operational tolerances.

The captain offered her a comforting grin. “Let’s get you suited up.”

She took the prompt and unbuckled herself from the seat. He showed her how to use a strap on the wall next to her to secure the briefcase temporarily.

Satisfied it wouldn’t float away, Tania followed Skyler to the back of the craft. He stopped next to a large metal locker and tugged it open. Inside a bright yellow environment suit waited.

“Your evening gown, miss.”

The suit looked ragged, like it had been used for many years. “I hope it fits.”
And works
.

“A little baggy, perhaps. As long as the seal is good you’ll be all right.”

The severity of what she would soon do crystallized in her mind. She pinched the yellow material between her fingers, reassured by the thickness of it. “And if the seal breaks?”

“If it breaks,” Skyler said, “we race back to Darwin, hopefully before—”

Tania put a hand on his arm to silence him. She knew the consequences of exposure and doubted they could make it back to the Aura’s Edge fast enough to stall the infection. The Aura did not cure the disease, or even kill it. It only put the virus into stasis. Dormant cells would stay that way even after they left the Aura, until they came in contact with a live copy that switched the sleeping cells back on. Because of that, air packaged inside the Aura would be safe to breathe, provided it never mixed with the tainted air outside.

To be exposed for hours would leave most people dead, and the rest devolved into a primal form of human, often with one emotion amplified at the expense of all others. Fear, desire, hatred, rage—one would consume the mind. The thought gave rise to a knot in her stomach.

Skyler removed the outfit from the locker and handed it to her. She took it and, with one arm hooked through a handhold on the wall, pulled it up over her legs. All the while she watched Skyler inspect the seal along the helmet, gloves, and boots she would put on next.

“How did you find out you’re immune?” she asked him.

He answered while studying the gear. “I was twenty, a copilot in the Luchtmacht … um, Dutch Air Force. When SUBS began spreading up through Africa, we were flying doctors and medical supplies to Alexandria. Then Naples. Madrid. Kept retreating, every day. On the way back from one mission, about a week after it all started, my pilot … just lost it. Everything scared the hell out of him. Everything. His own damn shoes were the most terrifying thing he’d ever seen. I had to subdue him. I didn’t know what it meant, not then.”

Tania let out a long breath, waiting.

“By the time I landed back home, everything was in chaos. It seemed like everyone had been possessed, only no two acted quite the same way. ‘Everyone has their own demon,’ I remember thinking.” He lifted the bulky helmet and placed it over her head, twisting it into place on the ring mount. “I ran, stole a truck. Drove into Amsterdam to try to find my family. It didn’t take long to realize the effect had hit everyone but me, near as I could tell. I really thought I was unique. The last sane man.”

“Did you find them? Your family?” she asked, while trying to picture herself racing through the streets of Mumbai, only to find her mom dead, or worse. She almost didn’t want to hear his answer.

Skyler shook his head, and for a few minutes he said nothing as he finished connecting her suit to an air pack. Then he moved on to the gloves. While slipping the first over her left hand, he said, “Never got close. The whole city had gone insane. An absolute nightmare. I took a gun from a dead policeman and managed to sneak and fight my way back to the open road. That’s when I met another immune, a guy named Skadz. He told me the feeds were abuzz with a rumor that Darwin was somehow unaffected, so we stole a transport plane from the base and flew there, more or less.”

The man became quiet. Tania sensed he could have included enough detail to scare her away from the journey they were on. Yet something in the calm, methodical way he went about suiting her up instilled confidence in her safety.

After the gloves and boots, Skyler pressurized her suit. A hiss of air was the only evidence that something changed.

“Breathe normally,” he said.

“Sorry.” She hadn’t even noticed her rapid breathing, and willed herself to calm down.

The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “Five minutes, guys.”

Jake and Samantha stirred in unison. Instinct kicked in as both of them immediately checked their harnesses.

“Suit checks out,” Skyler said. He took her arm and guided her across the cabin. “You’ve got about eighteen hours of Aura-scrubbed air compressed in that pack, more than enough for the time we’ll be in the Clear.”

With his help, she drifted back into her seat. The bulk of the hazard suit made movement awkward for her, but at least the gloves were formfitting. She managed to reattach the safety belts on her own.

“Might want to hold on to that bar,” Skyler said.

She took his advice, gripping it firmly with both hands. “Thank you.”

He winked at her and smiled.

Tania decided she liked him.

It seemed like an eternity passed before Angus’s voice came back on the intercom. “Ten seconds. Grab on to something.”

Tania could see Skyler mouth the countdown. He pushed hard against his restraint bar, preparing to fight against the force of acceleration she realized was imminent. At “one,” his entire face seemed to clench tight.

There was a loud, muffled thump, as the ship was released, followed by a backward somersault of the entire vessel. Tania felt at ease in zero-G conditions, but not sudden acceleration upside down. She closed her eyes.

A rumbling sound started soft, then grew louder. Somewhere behind her, Tania heard something break loose and tumble across the floor. She didn’t dare look.

She barely heard the pilot over all the commotion. “Engine’s at full.”

The sound became deafening.

“You never told us what’s in the case,” Samantha said, after ten minutes of intense acceleration ended. The ship now glided just above the atmosphere, in serene silence.

“Right, sorry,” Tania said, her own voice sounding strange to her inside the helmet of her suit. “Perhaps we should go over the plan?”

“Two hours to kill,” said Skyler, “good a time as any.” He tapped the intercom. “Angus, come back here, please.”

“How much do you know?” she asked.

“Our fence had few details,” Skyler said. “Take an Orbital out to some telescope in Hawaii and back, that’s about all we know.”

“Beats Darwin,” Jake said.

Samantha grunted. “Amen.”

Tania struggled briefly against her safety harness, to get enough room to remove an envelope from her bag. She handed it to Skyler. “Hawaii is correct, but it’s not a telescope. Our goal is inside the University of Hawaii at Hilo.”

“A college?” Skyler asked. A pang of worry flittered through his mind. Telescopes were isolated, and at high altitudes. A hostile environment for subhumans. A university could be considerably more dangerous.

“There’s a data vault there,” Tania said. “Part of a joint venture with NASA, decades ago.”

“More data cubes?” Jake asked.

Tania patted the top of the sleek case, made of some kind of brushed metal that Skyler did not recognize. “The facility is much older, before they had such technology. We’ll be capturing the data on site, with this.”

“What is that?” Samantha asked.

“A Ferrine multi-interface cube array …” She noted all their blank stares. “You plug it into old computers and it pulls out the data.”

“Is it fragile?” Skyler asked. “From the way you’ve been cradling it, I’m guessing so.”

“Just because we have so few left now.”

Samantha said, “How long does this, whatever the fuck, take?”

Tania shrugged. “Depends on how many records are there, and how well organized it is.”

“You got photos of the site?” Jake asked.

Skyler pulled two satellite picture from the envelope and handed them across the aisle.

“I’ll check those out when you’re done, Jake,” said Angus.